within a sepulcher
by lydiamartins
Summary: au - she'll never be one of them - no matter how hard she tries; oliviacentric, for coppertone wars' twelve days of christmas challenge, level two, part one!


**.:within a sepulcher:.**  
olivia ryans

It's nothing more than a shell - an empty shell of a human being, nothing more than a remainder of a queen that once ruled the world, but that was all the way back then, where everything was so much simpler, and it's just not right, how things have turned out. Sometimes, lying on the floor, golden curls splayed out across cement, cuts forming, and blood forming permanent highlights near the roots, Olivia thinks about the golden years.

But they're only golden years; And everything good has to have an end, so here's to the golden years ( here's to never growing up, pretending like we were the queens and kings ) and it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay that they're over. Everything's going to turn out fine. At least that's what her mother tells her father, but Olivia's lost track of her mothers. She's lost track of everything, fluttering into space, horribly innocent.

There was a time when innocence was valued - it was thought of a quality of a queen, perhaps one that was so delicate and fragile, yet inwardly a plotting mastermind - but then Olivia's innocence is thought of as stupidity.

Olivia lives in a fairytale, where the boys are nicer; These boys are not like your Westchester boys. They do not sit around, ties primly fashioned, delicately placing themselves onto leather chairs as they sit at mahogany tables, talking to their girlfriend's father about the latest business deals and tax details. They do not play soccer in the fields, shaking their rear every time something goes right; they are much more mature than those folks. These boys must work. Sitting or even relaxing for a moment will get them nowhere —actually, it'll get them kicked out of the house, and force them to live in the streets until they'll be able to make enough money to support their families once again. Once in a while, they are festivals 'round here; that's when they pull up girls in their four-wheel-drive's, hooting and hollering all the way home.

But that's just a dream, just a daydream away - nobody can change her dreams, but they'll try hard enough.

Golden years, not when the world was theirs, and everybody adored them - perhaps when they were innocent enough to play with wands and chase after boys and giggle with each other, splashing water; maybe when it was as easy as self-inflicting pain to make friends, just to introduce yourself, and suddenly, the two of you were best friends - forever and ever, _the two of you swore_; and suddenly it was middle school, and everything was a lot easier. Boys and girls, both of them, were superficial beings, so Olivia just joined along with them.

And, then, all of a sudden, she became just like them, but then everybody changed, and she didn't - couldn't.

.

Olivia's known that she isn't a normal child - a perfect child - by the age of eight.

Her parents are surgeons and doctors and lawyers and trophy wives, and Olivia has an IQ lower than that of a rabbit; and it's not like she isn't trying to be smarter, but she just isn't good enough, and after all, Olivia has no motivation. It wouldn't matter if she lost thirty pounds or started dying her hair purple - nobody would notice, at least not the people that matter.

The fifth stepmother takes her darling daughter ( _step_-daughter ) out for a modeling stunt one day, and Olivia is paralyzed; she's paralyzed in fear because she knows that she can't do this. Olivia knows that she'll just embarrass herself even more than usual, and even more than that, she just wants to find something that she's good at and stay inside of her little box - it's just much safer that way.

She doesn't know what to do, and even though she's commanding, ordering even, her feet to move (other people are, too), she can't hear anything, because all she can think of is failure. The last time that she had tried to pull a stunt like this, the paparazzi had had a field day. Then again, Olivia has nothing to lose anymore, but she needs something: motivation. For once, there's nobody to tell her what to do, and, in a way, it's almost frightening not having some overseer, some person to control her. Because deep down, beneath the perfect exterior, Olivia's a child.

Trying to keep her cool, Olivia smooths down her body-tight dress, walking onto the stage, smile on. And then, moments later, she throws up bad sushi upon all of the paparazzi who capture the moment and "Blonde Dimwit Retches!" ends up on Page Six.

.

Sometimes, she thinks about horrible she is;

Olivia fingers silk green fabric, ripping it out when she remembers everything everybody tells her, and sometimes, she just wishes that she could be that girl in elementary school - spinning around in fruit-flavored dresses, silk berets plopped upon blonde curls, insults going out one ear, coming out the other - but now, everything sticks.

Mistakes from earlier years come up, and it hurts her how everybody else is just so freaking perfect. It's not supposed to be this way, she knows, but Olivia can't help but wish that high school was like how it was in the books - this magical time, the time of your life (that's what the guidance counselor had kept on saying) - instead of hell. Because it's in high school when it's not possible to buy that many friends anymore, and your friends who had stuck by you since the very beginnings of elementary school have found better friends.

Olivia isn't good enough for them, and in a way, maybe she's never been good enough for them, but now, they've just realized the truth. She's nothing more than a monster, and she shreds the green fabric until it's little slips of silk floating in a tub of a bubble bath, foaming until it mixes with a darker blood red, and Olivia loses control, all of a sudden.

She lies upon the floor, staring upon the starry sky, the meteors and the comets moving at astronomical speeds, magic that could only come from perfection; tonight, though, they have all been blown out. There is this empty ache, the silence, the never-ending silence, that threatens to destroy every thought, every hope left in this desolate city. Olivia is lying still, extending her hand upwards as if she can still reach past the stars, pulling them all back down to her heavy heart; she believes that the normal nights have past long back —on normal nights, she wouldn't be here at all.

In a way, Olivia has lost herself, and she is nowhere to be found. Swinging upon a tire, in the wide, empty expanse, with nothing but crushed hopes and dreams, and thoughts of a different, worse future plague through the time; going back and forth is not that exhilarating. She expected this rush, the thrill of becoming free, but freedom is nothing but tying you down to what-if's and what-could-have-been's. Now on the back of the sun, Olivia realizes that she really has been traveling too long, and five years too long, she is returning back to home, but what is home now?

She scrapes a razor blade against her legs, because there's hair and hair means that she's human, and she can't do this anymore - why can't she just be perfect? Is it that hard to ask for - she's tried so hard, after all, and nothing that they say about her has to be true, but in a horrible way, everything is true, it's just so freaking true that it kills her. Sometimes, Olivia thinks that if she lets the truth kill her, then maybe they'll feel bad for her, posthumously, of course.

But then again, nobody's cared before, so why should they care now?

.

And, Olivia stands at the edge of a forked road, wind whistling through her ear, and just stays there - because, honestly, she's tired of moving from one place to another, and she decides that she's just going to stay right here. She's not going to run away to her father'a house in Paris or take a private jet to Brazil, but Olivia's going to face her fears.

And maybe, just maybe, it'll be worth it. It's not worth it - not one bit - and Olivia regrets her decision everyday.

She regrets it almost as much as being self-centered, and if she could go back to the beginning of high school, Olivia wouldn't have a pretense of overachiveing to hide the fact that she's failing half of her classes, and it's just too hard to keep up the act. Olivia's not really sure how everybody can manage what they do - being so perfect and unique while she just sits there in the front seat of the bus, staring aimlessly out of a stained-glass window, hearing the sounds of laughter and happiness and knows that she wants it.

But Olivia doesn't really have a personality - it's just layers and layers of a pretense trying to cover up insecurities of never being good enough. The thing is, she doesn't even want to be the best in everything - but Olivia just wants to be wanted, for people to do anything but insulting her new nose ( she only changed it to fit in, to be a better person; but nothing works, now does it? ) and is that too much to ask for? Apparently, it is.

Sometimes, Olivia is sitting in the middle of orchestra, from the very back of the room (last chair, yet again) and she stares in front of her, directly into the steely grey eyes of the retiring teacher, who always makes her feel like she's not good enough, and then Olivia sees everybody else. She sees how Mr. Sheldon treats Nicole, his star student, who performed in front of the president and had a solo at Carnegie Hall a few weeks back, and looking at how Mr. Sheldon looks at Nicole, almost as if he's proud of her, it's like he's a completely different person, but it's not just one person.

Olivia stares in front of her and everybody's beautiful - there's girls with red curly hair and a perfect ski slope nose, without the surgery of course, girls with straight platinum blonde hair who belong on the cover of vogue, and slightly overweight girls with thin hair, but they all look so beautiful not because of their carefully selected outfits or mascara or even the boost of confidence that comes from a new diet, but because they're all happy - genuinely happy.

They - Olivia and Chris - are standing not adjacent to each other, a few friends in between, as they both embark on their separate journeys. She is sitting down now, with a group of friends in one of their bedrooms when she sees him passing by through the windows, curtains drawn open —she is not spared a second glace as he walks past.

She is running away from him now, tears spilled over in her glazed-over eyes, past the reds and the blues, the pinks and whites, past everything that bears any resemblance, even the slightest, to human nature, farther away until there's nothing left but where she came from. They are assigned to be partners at the academy, and little do their own teachers know that perhaps pairing the best girl and the most talented boy to be pas du deux partners perhaps was not their greatest plan, especially if as much as they practice the only result is sinking.

He decides that she's too stiff, that she doesn't know how to have fun anymore, to which she greatly protests. Against her own will, he drags her off to the spring fling, in which they dance on the tabletops all night, drinking lemonade and cherry-flavored soda as they let go of all the pressure and the stress, not caring if they sink or swim. But, Olivia sinks because she can't keep her head above water - or maybe, she doesn't want to.

No matter how hard Olivia tries, she'll never be one of them - but maybe, that's okay.

.

**notes |** i haven't written anything olivia centric so for the coppertone wars' christmas challenge, level 2 here is part one of the AU challenge; ooh, i think i'm going to write something every day from now on; how's thanksgiving, guys?


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